Comments on: elena perlino – des corps dans la villehttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/
burn is an online feature for emerging photographers worldwide. burn is curated by magnum photographer david alan harvey.Mon, 19 Feb 2018 18:53:43 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3By: Robert Larsonhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-76144
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:42:39 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-76144I was so excited to see this essay when I read the description. What an interesting subject you had the opportunity to pursue. I am so sorry that you chose to photograph it in such an passive, un-detailed and un-insightful way. These blurry/fuzzy/grainy pictures bothered the hell out of me. Get in their faces, take clear pictures, and show me what the hell is going on!
]]>By: elena perlinohttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75821
Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:52:56 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75821Thank all of you so much for the active feedback!

Your remarks are a great “kick in the butt” for me, and push me to develop the story further, which I have been planning since the beginning.

I am currently searching for the means to realize the “rest of the story” in Algeria, which I know will put another angle on this subject, which in fact has been documented so often. Having established relationships, which go well beyond the scope of this project with most of the subjects, has already given me astonishing insight.

Single images can be interpreted infinitively and I greatly enjoy the variety of opinions. The thing I thank you for most is the appreciation for the intimacy of the situations I tried to document.

Thanks a lot,

Elena

]]>By: mark ghttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75611
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:11:16 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75611Interesting how different people can have wholly different takes (one of the reasons I keep coming back to Burn). To Jamie Maxtone-Graham ‘it feels like something stands between [Elena Perlino’s] courage and either [her] ability or [her] experience (or something like that).’

Elena is the only person who can verify whether or not her courage was obstructed in some way. As I have indicated, there are some images which seem (to me) to detract from the strength of this series, mainly the ones in which there either doesn’t appear to be enough happening or whose content is too indistinct, but these are relatively few. She certainly seems courageous enough to me, from both an artistic and purely physical point of view. There is a real grittiness to her approach, and a warmth too; I think Capa would have approved.

As Jamie notes, there are ‘several terribly compelling images’, but, once again, I disagree with him that #8 ‘really goes somewhere that the others dont ever touch’ or ‘reach’, which implies that this is the strongest images in the series. It is a striking portrait, sure, and there is a nice frankness to it. But its posed symmetry and relative stillness seems slightly out of whack to me, closer to Arbus territory. There’s an intimacy here, but I’d argue that the rest of the series has an intimacy too, only less formally one-to-one and more in the run of that particular ‘microcosm’. I think #8 gets slightly in the way of that; its a distraction (and possibly another kind of project).

But I’m glad Jamie thinks that Elena is ‘to be congratulated’ for this ‘rich material’. I’m with him on that one, all the way.

]]>By: Julien Coquentinhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75572
Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:16:52 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75572Hello Elena
I just spent one year in Lyon, and I had read that the city was conducting a war against prostitution, which had moved more in the suburbs, is anyway the same problem in all major French cities since the closure of brothels.
In any case I find your story particularly successful because intimate, We feel you near these bodies, with them for the better and worse, if I may say …
I especially like the first photo and the title …
Congratulations for this publication.
]]>By: Frostfroghttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75534
Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:06:54 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75534Jamie – A very witty choice of words on your part:

There are, in fact, several terribly compelling images that I wished you’d followed on with (#8 for example really goes somewhere that the others dont ever touch). Something is expressed in that single frame that the sum of the others doesn’t quite reach. Still, nothing to moan about; it’s work that is better than most and that’s why it’s here and you are to be congratulated. It’s greedy of me but I want something more out of this really rich material. And it’s just right there for you…..

]]>By: Gustav Liliequisthttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75424
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:40:04 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75424Great feel to this essay. Number 9 doesn’t do it for me – otherwise I really like the photographs. Impressed by how close you got.
]]>By: evahttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75316
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:13:24 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75316Funny you say that, Imants, I feel that this is an essay that has the strenght to convey the atmosphere even without knowing it first hand..
]]>By: Imantshttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75315
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:20:48 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75315It’s one of those essays……….. you have got to have been there or in a similar place to feel the atmosphere. One looks at the images and says >”yea I remember that night”………..
]]>By: peter granthttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75307
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:54:47 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75307Hi Elana..

people are always interesting. Coming together. Needy in there opposite ways. The dynamics of how we respond to a given situation, and how changing a law has such consequences. I feel you’ve caught a lot of that in this essay.
I liked the look of some of these images. That soft glow.

]]>By: benrobertshttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75285
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:21:55 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75285fairly interesting image, but many of the captions feel speculative at best – they just don’t match up with the content of the images. in cases like this, i almost feel like the captions need to be stripped right down; let the project statement/introduction set the scene.
]]>By: mark ghttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75276
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:36:11 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75276Elena, bravo! This is a remarkable project and I think you have some brilliant images. First impression, although 3, 4, 5, 6 are excellent, the slideshow appears to get slightly stronger in the latter part (17, 18, 19 are extraordinary). I think you might consider dropping some of the weaker, less clear or more ubiquitous images (such as 7 or 9 for example), though I can see they serve a purpose. I like your writing, straight and to the point, and your illuminating thumbnail stories (such as Fernanda) are touching (be interesting to read more of those). You really bring home the ‘intimacy of a well-tuned microcosm’. I am sure there is plenty of fear (and perhaps far worse), but I don’t know about living ‘in pure hell.’ Hell compared to my privileged, essentially middleclass world, sure, quite possibly, but there are many kinds of suffering, many forms of pleasure and pain driven by our relentless appetites, and I’ve known a few people who’ve lived on the rougher side of the tracks and survived. What strikes me about these images is the intimacy of that makeshift world, its fusion of the contemporary and the ancient (it may not actually be the ‘oldest profession’, but it’s certainly close). Again, bravo!
]]>By: john gladdyhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75272
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:10:23 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75272I really wanted to like this as the story is a strong one, and I really tried to get into the pictures because of this….but they dont move me and they hardly engage me at all. A shame as I think there is a story here. Maybe I am expecting too much, and maybe I put the pictures above the story(in fact i know I do), but I do know this presentation, as it stands, shows me a story but doesnt show me any extraordinary photography.
]]>By: Mike Rhttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75266
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:47:01 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75266Good work Elena, held my attention from start to finish. Throughout, I wondered what the hell the people living in the neighbourhood thought of the nightly invasion of white vans!

Prostitution is a complicated and multi-faceted subject matter with, I would imagine, almost as many stories as there are participants.

Thanks for telling your subject’s stories so well.

Mike.

]]>By: Frostfroghttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75263
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:20:23 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75263What a nightmare you have taken us into – both for the prostitutes and their clients, it looks to me – although the prostitutes appear to be living in pure hell. I knew nothing of these vans until I saw this essay. Sometimes, here in the sexually conflicted and contradictory US, I wonder if perhaps many of the problems surrounding prostitution could be solved if society could just accept that it is a fundamental function of human nature, could legalize it, pass and strictly enforce laws to protect those who would become prostitutes and to really come down hard on those who would traffic and prey upon those who would choose not to but get forced into it.

Now, I see your essay and I am left with the feeling that perhaps it is all hopeless, that humans are simply incapable of rationally dealing with all the manifestations and implications of their own sexuality – the very thing that keeps us going on this earth.

Well done. You did not get overly graphic, yet you told this oft-told story in way that I had never before seen it told and you brought it home powerfully.

]]>By: Lee Guthriehttp://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/08/elena-perlino-des-corps-dans-la-ville/#comment-75254
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:53:59 +0000http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=6931#comment-75254Elena, stunning. Just saw a documentary on a group of women (not prostitutes) that are working on getting the vans legal in England. I thought then it was an odd idea and where would they park? And would the neighborhood be overwhelmed by “rocking and rolling” vans. The photos of the vans parked along the road answered the question.

These photographs are very intimate; you were right there–even with a client in the car. You did such a good job with available light and your photos tell a story that kept my attention. Nice work Elena; congratulations on being featured here on Burn.